Has a wireless device tied you to work?

Friday

The line between work and home is fuzzier than ever, what with our smartphones and tablets and ever-present wireless signals.

The line between work and home is fuzzier than ever, what with our smartphones and tablets and ever-present wireless signals.

All those digital tools mean workers can pore over spreadsheets at the dinner table.

They can check corporate email accounts during the kid’s soccer game.

They can update the company’s Facebook status at bedtime.

Connected to work

The constant connectivity can mean more flexibility for employees and better responsiveness for clients.

Laurie Walters works as the controller for Gastonia’s Spectrum Marketing.

The company president and vice president are almost always available via email or text message. When Walters has a question, she says, “You can pretty much always get an answer when you need it.”

Maybe someone in a meeting can’t answer a phone call, but they can probably reply to email or text.

Out of town employees can log on after the kids go to bed.

Those on the road can work from the hotel room or the coffee shop.

“Nobody just stops working at 5 o’clock anymore,” Walters says.

Michael Sumner at The Sumner Group sees it, too.

The iPhone and the high-speed Internet make it easier for the head of his Internet division to do the work necessary on weekends.

When a child is sick, that child’s mother can do research and deal with clients from home.

In other words, the e-tools often help bosses meet the needs of their workers and the needs of their clients.

Is it good for everyone?

Before assigning the win-win cliché to the digital work culture, human resources managers and employee rights workers would caution employers to refresh their browsers.

Most American workers are doing more with less today. Close to 9 million layoffs nationwide meant longer hours, often with the same or less pay, and heavier demands.

“Having workers stay in the office evenings or on the weekends isn’t as easy as letting them go home but expecting them to check emails and respond to messages,” says Catherin Ruckelshaus, legal co-director for the National Employment Law Project.

“I think it’s easier to squeeze out more hours from workers when they’re mobile.”

The result has shown up in courts across the country.

Employment attorneys say wage and hour lawsuits, typically from workers who lost their jobs, were up last year by 32 percent compared to 2008.

Among the common complaints: Smartphones and other Internet-enabled tools meant they were forced to work off the clock.

The Federal Fair Labor Standards Act says hourly, or non-exempt, employees have to be paid overtime for working more than 40 hours in any week.

A lot of workers, Ruckelshaus says, are working that overtime thanks to iPhones and iPads without getting paid for it.

That’s not only due to the technology but also because many workers are counted as exempt from overtime when they shouldn’t be, according to Ruckelshaus.

Worse, they’re probably not complaining about it because they don’t want to put their jobs in jeopardy.

“If the overtime rules were followed and enforced, a lot of workers who are tethered to smartphones would not be,” she says.

Business reaction

Corporations are reacting, albeit slowly, to the threat posed by after-hours email.

One in five U.S. organizations have formal policies to regulate wireless communication during non-working hours, according to a survey from the Society for Human Resources Management.

Roughly a fourth have an information policy, says the group.

And of those that have an official plan in place, nearly half say the rules on working wirelessly apply to private devices, not just those the company provides or reimburses for.

Among the corporations testing the regulations on at-home work are Volkswagen, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, The Washington Post reports.

Creating balance

Few respondents to the HR group’s survey listed a healthy work-life balance as a reason for creating policies to limit wireless work.

Local professionals offer that employee equilibrium as one of the main concerns.

“I think it’s important for people to take mental breaks but it’s difficult,” says Walters, who is seldom the only person working but often the only one doing so from the office.

“Some people try to set boundaries but I don’t know how successful they are.”

The emails she sees from co-workers who are getting their jobs done at 10 p.m. or 4 a.m. tell her that much.

And her own experience proves how hard it is for workers to be out of touch in an always moving world.

“It makes it harder and harder to stop,” she says. “You can turn off the phone and everything else but you’re really tempted to turn it all back on.”

Expecting more

Client expectations are also changing, according to Sumner.

If customers don’t get a return email or text on the same day, they start to think a company doesn’t find them important enough.

Gone are the days of answering machines and calls back on Monday.

“We’re kind of in this microwave mindset where everything’s got to be done right now,” Sumner says.

He thinks all the pressure can take away from the relationships that build all-important trust with customers.

You don’t get new business with emails and Twitter feeds, Sumner insists.

“The technology is great,” he says. “But you’ve got to structure that with old-fashioned face time and customer service.

“I think the technology ends up costing some people business. You can be in contact all the time without ever having a quality visit, and 15 emails a day can’t equal the importance of that 15-minute visit.”

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